Get the kids out! Why it is a good idea to promote outdoor classes

The importance of open and green spaces is gaining weight in the minds of many, even after some biosecurity measures (such as capacity) began to relax in countries like ours, because there is a perceived decrease in the numbers of the pandemic.

Now, when we talk about getting together, we ask ourselves: Do we open the windows? Are there tables outside? Let’s go to the park? We want breathe fresh air. But also we want to receive natural light and see the surroundings that for some time we could not.

“Let us remember how our grandparents and parents, and perhaps many of us, grew up,” he says. Alfredo Tinajero Miketta, child development specialist, PhD in Early Human Development. “We climbed trees. We ran barefoot on grass and dirt. And we bathed in the Guayas River. Today, unfortunately, this reality has changed.

In the book The Last Child in the Woods (Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder), Richard Louv explains how increasing urbanization has made children of the 21st century grow up disconnected from nature, indicates Tinajero, and this disconnection has adverse effects on learning and health, and also on the development of the values ​​of love, care and union with the natural world. “The negative effect of the man-nature separation gains greater strength today due to the many hours children spend sitting in front of a desk or television.”

According to researchers from the American Louv line, open and green spaces offer children the unique opportunity to interact in freer environments, invent games, exercise, set their own rules and at the same time have fun.

“The evidence indicates that this contact is beneficial for the immune system”, adds Tinajero, “because it raises the body’s defenses, helps control stress levels and reduces body mass. In addition, it favors self-discipline and self-regulation; it improves concentration, helps to recover the level of attention after carrying out prolonged academic tasks, raises academic performance and, in the pedagogical field, helps to mitigate behaviors related to attention and concentration deficits”.

It’s not little, right? There is more. “Psychologically,Green spaces help connect with basic emotional states that lead to self-discovery and – extremely valuable – the ability to wonder”.

For teachers, nature and green spaces can be a teaching-learning framework for the development of language, mathematics and art. This is equivalent to giving nature a voice, in the words of the educator, “letting it speak, contemplating it with all the senses, to observe its rhythms and wisdom”.

A local case: the Friends of the Ocean Foundation, on the Santa Elena peninsula, gives us an example of how to combine classroom teaching with teaching in nature and outdoors. “The ocean offers children ideas to tell stories, discuss values ​​about the need to take care of water, identify and draw marine species, and develop environmental protection projects.”

Tinajero, author of Early stimulation: emotional and cognitive intelligence, invites parents and teachers to rescue the experiences of green and open spaces for children. “This is especially important in these times of COVID-19 when children have suffered from prolonged confinement and more time in front of a computer screen. That climbing a tree is part of the study curriculum!”.

Advantages for the child and for the teachers

When we think of schools, we often imagine buildings full of classrooms, with desks and blackboards (at least we adults do). “But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, a school can be much more than this,” he defends. Pilar Caicedo Aspiazu, Master in Education.

“If the school where they work has green areas, they must be used every day, not only for recreation, but within the activities. And if the school does not have green spaces, there is always the possibility of visiting a nearby park”, proposes the educator.

Schools, continues Aspiazu, can integrate green spaces and nature into their daily lives. Here he lays out some very simple ways to do it:

• Large windows. Being able to observe what is happening outside the classroom, expanding the student’s visual range, helps them to manage anxiety, to feel less confined and, above all, to relate to what is outside the school.
• Planned activities in green spaces. To learn about insects, a walk in the park is much better than reading an entire book on the subject. Why not become explorers for a day and keep a diary of everything observed. Every boy and girl will be able to learn through all their senses.
• Development of environmental awareness. There is much talk about how important it is to educate in respect for the environment, however, how do we do it if we do not have the opportunity to live it. The fact that a student is constantly contact with animals and plants it makes you understand them better and take an interest in caring for and protecting them.
• Skill development. Physical activity is important for health, but also for learning. Children need to move to learn to coordinate their bodies, get on games to know how to balance and to have strength in their hands, which will later help them in handling a pencil.
• Toys from natural materials. Respect for nature must be given inside and outside the classroom. One way to prove it is opt for paper, cardboard and wood, and use less plastic and fomix. We are the example of our students, and although we do not realize it, every decision we make will influence them.

Citizenship education: a window to the community

Natural environments influence students in such a way that it is impossible to be indifferent to what happens in these spaces, indicates the educational researcher Eduardo Molinaauthor of the book Pedagogy of the complaint. This situation, he adds, presses for a modification or flexibility of the curriculum.

“Specifically, in terms of citizenship education, an approach to the community and its problems is promoted, and an opportunity to develop empathy and interest in helping to solve said conflicts, and in this search learning is produced that compromises the formation of a critical and participatory citizen”, Molina maintains.

The pandemic showed that online education is not possible, says the researcher, “unless you have worked on self-taught skills, that is, being able to study on your own without the help of others. For that, From now on, the school must worry about forming good readers from an early stage.”. What is a good reader? Someone who is free to choose his reading, “since it should not be imposed.”

Molina is aware that this would mean a curricular flexibility, in which the teacher is perceptive enough to recognize the learning of each child in their self-education. In addition, he concludes, “an excellent way to read books that interest one is, precisely, reading in parks or open spaces, not in schools-greenhouses.” (F)